World Emoji Day Is July 17th

Today is World Emoji Day — because let’s face it, everything nowadays has its own holiday. Therefore, to celebrate adorn your text messages with your favorite, whether it may be hearts, smiley faces, or even the sun icon.

According to an article on WTNH entitled Monday is World Emoji Day, the holiday was created three years ago by the founder of Emojipedia.

I remember when emoji first made its way onto the scene. It was back in 2011, when I was a senior in high school, and I logged into my Twitter to see picture adorning tweets and Instagram posts. Back then, you had to download the app onto your phone to set up the keyboard versus having it already downloaded onto your phone like it does nowadays.

Since then, emoji has become a huge part of pop culture, especially as iPhones and social media have become more and more the norm. Everyone gets excited when new ones come out (I don’t know about you all, but I was so excited about the taco one). I’ve seen them even in products as well — from plush key chains, to phone cases, to cupcakes. There’s even an Emoji movie now. I honestly can’t remember what life was like before you had them to add to posts/texts — as beforehand there was no need to stress out about what emoji to send to the guy you were talking to/dating/married to.

I believe that’s when emoticons were a thing (for those who don’t know what those are, those are the smiley faces made with the colon and the parenthesis mark). Ahh, the days of AIM.

Although emoji is a huge part of the millennial and technology field in the modern era, we can’t forget what their main purpose is — to make text messages fun.

So, thank you emoji for making the text message experience ten times more enjoyable to my friends and I.